The soft drink and beer industries, as well as other industries, process a very large number of bottles or other containers every day and bottle and article processing apparatus as made and sold commercially today must operate rapidly, safely and dependably in filling carrier cases completely with articles to be packaged therein and in removing all articles from filled cases that are being unloaded. The apparatus also should be readily adjustable to handle cases of different sizes. Efforts are continually being made to increase the speed of operation of article and bottle casing and uncasing apparatus and to improve the dependability and efficiency thereof. One U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,285, is designed to automatically lift containers, especially bottles, from moving cases and then to deposit them onto a second conveyor at a remote spot. This patent utilized a series of closely adjacent, self-operating grippers that are carried along an endless path above a moving case or cases that are to be emptied. The patented apparatus moves the grippers through a fixed orbit including a descending angular path approaching a bottom or inflection point for article engagement and change in direction of movement of the grippers to an upwardly inclined angle. The patent teaches that the speed of the chains moving the gripper jaws through an orbit in the vertical plane must be slightly greater than the speed of the conveyor controlling flow of filled cases through the apparatus so that there is a horizontal velocity component of the gripper jaw moving chains equal to the speed of movement of the case control conveyor.
Such prior patent utilizes a plurality of gripper fingers or means therein that are substantially longitudinally abutted in the control apparatus. The patent has no means adapted to position gripper members in positions correlated with the articles in a case to be loaded or unloaded.
The general object of the present invention is to provide an improved article caser apparatus; while specific objects are to provide article gripper means and controls therefor in article casers and the like wherein the article gripper means are arranged in groups corresponding to the articles to be positioned in or removed from the case whereby accurate alignment and article engagement action can be obtained; also to present apparatus to move the article gripper means through a controlled orbit and correlate the speed and positions of the gripper means at the inflection area with the cases being processed for best article deposit therein; and to control the positions of the gripper means by control arms and guide means operatively engaging the gripper means.
Another object of the invention is to mount gripper means on carrier bars extending transversely of the apparatus in fixed dependent angular relation thereto whereby the position of the gripper means in relation to the vertical can be controlled through the carrier bars that are operatively connected to driven control conveyors.
Other objects of the invention are to provide a pair of control arms engaging each gripper means carrier bar in the article processing apparatus whereby the carrier bar, that is pivotally positioned, can be controlled to make the article gripper means, positioned by the bar, be on a vertical axis while the carrier bar is moved towards, through and past the inflection area or point; to control the positions of carrier bars and the article gripper means positioned thereby through article engaging, deposit and/or release stations of the apparatus, but yet to permit merely a general control action of the carrier bars and the positioning thereof throughout the remaining portion of the closed orbit of the carrier bars as determined by their drive conveyor; to utilize mechanical guide bars requiring a minimum of maintenance thereon for effectively controlling the positions of gripper means in article casing and uncasing apparatus; to position certain pantograph members, drive chain means and guide rollers for carrier bars, on common axes, and to position the gripper carrier bars on axes radially internally of the conveyor orbit to aid in controlling the speed of movement of the article gripper means on the carrier bars at the inflection area or point in the apparatus; and to provide control movements of the gripper means by short downstream movement of the article conveyor.
One of the objects of the present invention is to adapt the velocity compensator apparatus of a case unpacker over to do a case packing action with minor modifications in the case unpacker apparatus and wherein similar members and apparatus are used throughout but with modifications being made thereto to achieve the different goals of the present invention.
Another object of the invention is to improve the dependability, speed and efficiency of article uncasing and casing apparatus.
The foregoing and other objects and advantages of the invention will be made more apparent as the specification proceeds.